Is it a world-beater waiting to fly off the shelves, or a yawn-inducer that has left gamers with their hands firmly in their pockets? For the UK launch of Sony's PlayStation 3, due on March 23, the answer seems to depend on whether you believe the retailers - who may have a vested interest in talking up its promise - or the gamers.

First, the excitement. Last week the high street chain Woolworths issued a press release saying that it was taking a pre-order for a PS3 every 20 seconds. "The hottest gaming system since the PS2!" declared its head of games. Meanwhile Play.com, the online retailer, said the PS3 was "the most pre-ordered in history", with six times more pre-orders than for Microsoft's Xbox 360 and 15 times more than Nintendo's Wii.

And the high street chain Game said "customers are extremely excited" about the PS3 and, unsurprisingly, "we are receiving more pre-orders every day". Yet numbers were suspiciously hard to come by. "We want to keep all our [console] suppliers happy," says Game. (The Guardian has established that Game had 60,000 Wii pre-orders. It did not provide numbers for Xbox 360 or PS3 pre-orders by press time.)

Play.com promised to fulfil all pre-orders for PS3s. But here's the odd thing: it was not able to meet all the pre-orders for Xbox 360s and Wiis. You would think that if it messed up on the Xbox 360, it might have the system in place for the Wii. Apparently not; so how is Play so confident that it will meet its PS3 demand - unless the pre-orders are not overwhelming?

Reaction on the Guardian's Gamesblog and on other British gamer sites do not imply huge pent-up demand for the PS3. There might be financial reasons why not: initially, UK residents will only be able to buy the more expensive version of the PS3, costing £425, which comes with a 60GB (rather than 20GB) hard drive. No UK launch date or price has yet been set for the smaller version.

"As a Brit, and as a gamer, the PS3 is not appealing at all," wrote ElNini, a commenter on kotaku.com, which pointed to the disparity between Woolworths' excited words and the reaction on the street. "As a gamer, because the launch titles are nothing to be excited about, and as a Brit, because I'm not shelling out £425 for it when the rest of the world got it for half the price four months earlier."

He added: "Anyone that buys one in the hope of eBaying it off and making a profit, dream on. They're not going to sell out anyway."

So how many PS3s are being ordered? Are they selling faster than the Wii or Xbox 360? Woolworths admitted that the Wii took less than three weeks to sell out its presale allocation. The PS3 has been available for pre-order since February 7 - so if it hits Woolworths' pre-order limit in the next few days, it will clearly be as popular, in relative terms, as its smaller rival.

One commenter at Otaku estimated the Woolworths figure - assuming a 12-hour day, seven-day week - to mean it is taking just over 15,000 orders per week. For a chain with 800 stores, that's not bad - but it wouldn't put the PS3 ahead of the Wii.